New Booking System
Comments
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Once you have brought up the site details for which you are interested in, click on "Check availabilty" and enter your party details and the prices of the party will be displayed on the calendar for each day if their are vacancies for the dates. Select any month of interest and the price will be similarly shown. They dynamically change as you alter the months.
peedee
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Can I add some balance to your post as the Club has been accused of using misleading stats on this thread and I feel that you have done the same. Yes there are over 2,000 posts but not all of them are unique and I would estimate that the number of unique members and also remember non members can post to be around 200 to 250. Which means that the vast majority of the 2,000 posts are multiple posts by a much smaller number of people. Also not the posts have been of complaint but by members trying to help ours. So I personally don't feel that it is a clear indication at all.
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Other than insisting CL owners are club members and collecting their £56, as I understand it, the club makes no charge to CLs.
Remember, though, that many club members are only members in order to use the CLs so an unknown number contribute £56 to the club coffers as well as the 2000 odd site owners.
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Agreed. CLs cost the club money but they don’t seek to recoup this from the CL owners as per my post above👍🏻
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They have got their own very good booking system but only about 10 percent of CL owners pay to use it so clearly the majority are not overly bothered about having a good search and booking system. One owner I spoke to about it said it wasn't worth his while to use it!
peedee
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That’s not for me to judge, Arch. I’m not party to the finer workings of the CAMC minds.😀
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As has been said CL owners also have to be members of the Club. By my reckoning that would bring in somewhere in the region of £150,000 a year to the Club. By any stretch of the imagination that is hardly going to cover the cost that the Club expends of staff costs/promotion costs. (clearly not IT costs
) Perhaps you need to add to that figure part of the membership fees of those that say they are only in the Club to use CL's. If they allocated a fiver from every member that would come is at around £1,750,000. I somehow doubt that much is spent on CL's. I don't recall anyone every saying what sort of figure the CL's cost in total. So without official confirmation it's a bit of chicken and egg situation. Does the existence of CL's add to Club coffers or are they a net cost and even the answer to that would depend on what basis it was worked out by?David
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Let’s make it clear the fees those CLs pay to use that particular booking system do not go to the club. It’s a totally separate private enterprise.
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The CL owners pay just over £12 pm for a very professional and easy to use private booking site. We've used it as it lets you know availability etc. I think about 14000 people have signed up to use it! It's an example of how to make things work for both owners and customers.
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My point was to ensure no one got the impression that the fees go to CAMC.
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It still seems to be a mess. Since the 'update', we've been away three times and arranged a longer trip for next year. Not one was booked through this site.
Not that I didn't try but the delays, the crashes, the sheer unintuitive nature of the current system, not to mention its poor accessibility on mobile, and the occasions it was completely down, meant we gave up every time.
It seems a tad ironic that in attempting to address a 70% occupancy rate (as someone said earlier when complaining 30% of people hadn't turned up) they have created a system so unworkable that I imagine occupancy rates will fall even further. It only takes 21 days for people to adopt new habits. This website has now been unworkable for longer than that. It has gone from being the first place I look to book sites, to the last. I doubt I'm the only one.
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One of the benefits for the Club of having the CLs is that it allows them to advertise member access to "our entire campsites network, including thousands of privately owned 5-van campsites".
If the Club were to ditch the certification of CLs I definitely wouldnt be a member. The only Club product we now use is Mayday, and I am sure we could find an equivalent deal elsewhere. It simply wouldnt be worth our while for the very occasional club site we use. However, I would have thought that the CL network brought more to the Club overall, however you calculate it, so I think it unlikely the Club would ditch the system.
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Sorry to see some are still not finding the site easy to navigate or complete with confidence. Clicking that final check out box can be a marathon!
Brue, I tried to look at the cost of a couple of club sites this afternoon on my kindle, and the whole of the booking page was jumping all over the place. It took me about 20 mins, after closing and the reopening the web site a few times before I was able to find out the only I was seeking for the two sites but gave up after that as I have more important things to do than swear incessantly at this terrible excuse for a booking web site. There is no way I was going to attempt to view CLs using the filters supplied.
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But one cannot easi!y compare prices across the board, which one could easily do previously. Yet another retrograde step!
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I can't imagine the Club would ever want to "ditch" CL's from its portfolio of sites as its such a part of the Club's DNA. I think one of the problems moving forward will be how members will want to access CL information and bookings. I wonder if the Club ever considered separating out the CL's from the main Club sites as option when putting in the new website? The independent CLBooking App or something like it is probably the way to go but you will have to have more than 10% of CL owners willing to use it and clearly some don't want that. How many CL owners would give up or move elsewhere is something we don't know. I seem to recall that at the 2021 AGM the Club said they were looking at how they could bring CL bookings the system but I suspect that is riddled with difficulties and it could be a hard sell. I have not been a great users of CL's in the past but those I have used have been attached to other businesses where online booking would be an easy option but that is clearly not universal.
David
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Personally I think that aspect is better than before nellie. It gives you the exact cost per night for your party and chosen pitch type. Previously you had to add the component parts together to achieve it. Re the Kindle, they clearly haven't tested it on some devices and unfortunately there is no mention of that side of things in the fixes list.
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What do you mean by across the board? You can certainly compare prices for any date in the year for a site and as Steve says it is much easier to check. If you want to compare them with another site then there is such a thing a pen and pencile or you could ask the Club to include the price on the "Comparison" function. It would seem an obvious thing to do at some stage.
The old site is history and as I rarely used such functions and am getting quite used to the new system, I am having a hard time remembering how the old one worked
peedee
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One wonders if the problems with the booking system will result in less bookings for CL's apart from any possible reduction in bookings at CAMC sites and, as a result, precipitate many CL's in deciding it is no longer worth it and close. A significant reduction in the CL network is a distinct possibility.
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I do like a good conspiracy theory👍🏻🙂. This isn’t the1st discompose with CAMC as I well remember the grand harumph of the name change that too was going to destroy CAMC/CL’s due to so many ‘considering’ leaving in disgust. This is just another one that will be overcome by the passage of time. It’s a blip-an annoying one for sure but a blip & it will calm in time just as all the others have👍🏻
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that only works on club sites, it won't give you the price of a C.L.
the old system did, so if a C.L. was charging the same as a club site you didn't bother, but with this new system you have to phone them up to find out
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I agree over the name change...folk were still able to book their breaks without any change...however, I think this runs a bit deeper.
without a doubt, this has seriously hacked many members off, far mo so that the cosmetic and meaningless '..and Motorhome' addition, despite its ridiculous cost.
the difference now is that, some folk on some platforms, are really struggling to make sense of what's happened where even the workarounds don't work on some platforms.
add in the sneaky price rises alongside the open handed ones and these been a serious hike in getting away.
compound this with general inflation and, specifically, high fuel costs, plus the rumour of more 'leccy' price rises and folk won't be going away on a whim like they did a year ago.
I certainly think CAMC have cured its 'availability' issue, but perhaps not in the way they thought.
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I generally agree with you too BB but. . .I have been here long enough to see the multitude of folk threaten to ‘not renew’ they are still posting with ‘member’ under their avatar. It will go on until pain is felt due to lost revenue. I’ve voted-it’s me not renewing because I use many other options👍🏻
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If you put the name of the CL in the magnifying glass search engine then you get results from which you select the CL and get the original page which includes the price (with all the usual caveats about CL prices) Also allows you to see coordinates and directions.
You don’t even need to be in the booking section of the site. This works on desk tops running windows, and Chrome and also on my I pad.
I agree it is not the previous link to the full site details that we used to have, although one of the proposed fixes is to bring that link back.
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or the availability which the old site also did not do. I expect the link to the CL page will be added in due course where there is a price indicator but you were and are always advised to ring the CL to check the price to avoid surprises.
peedee
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Good on you, Rocky.
Me too but the wheels of CAMC turn exceedingly slowly as ever. Two months ago I made the decision to put my money where my mouth is by not paying further membership fees to an organisation which treats its members with such disdain.
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Funny old world, I agree the communication from the Club is dire but 3 months ago I was leaning towards leaving the Club but now all thoughts have been put to oneside. Put in electric metering and I will quite content to keep up my membership even though I do not use sites and services as much as in the past.
peedee
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